LinkedIn Sees Huge Growth in the German Speaking Region of Europe In The Last Year

LinkedIn, the social network for businesses and professionals, has only recently pushed its site in the German-speaking regions of Germany, Austria and Switzerland and they are already seeing higher than expected results. Their biggest European competitor is the Hamburg-based Xing, which offers a very similar service and currently holds the number one spot, but the latest membership statistics from LinkedIn shows that LinkedIn memberships are growing at a pace of more than double that of Xing.

One of the biggest advantages LinkedIn has over Xing is that a majority of the site’s features are available for free to registered members. LinkedIn makes its money from job hiring services, marketing solutions, and premium subscriptions for its power users whereas Xing on the other hand offers very little for its free members and charges a monthly fee for many of the necessary features that go along with a social networking site. Only 20% of LinkedIn’s income comes from subscription costs versus 69% at Xing.

Back in August, LinkedIn opened up an office in Munich and at that time had a European membership of 30 million. In less than one year they saw an increase of 5 million users. During that same period, Xing only saw an increase of 700,000 members throughout Europe. At least 2 million LinkedIn users are from one of the German-speaking regions, and while that may not seem like a large amount, its important to note that Xing only reports 5.51 million users in that same area. It’s only a matter of time before the American based LinkedIn takes the number 1 business network title away from Germany’s own Xing.

Stephen founded German Pulse and LGBT Germany out of a passion to introduce Americans to a Germany that goes beyond beer and polka (although with enough beer he has been known to polka it up a bit). He's a coffee addict, lover of wine and good times, a hit in the kitchen and editor of TV commercials. You can follow him on Twitter (@StephenWFuchs) to find out a lot more.